Stratocaster vs. Telecaster

Or think of the Rickenbacker. The Rick is immediately associated with jangle, a la Byrds, REM, Tom Petty, etc.

I bought a Rickenbacker 330 for that reason, and discovered that jangle actually wasn't what I was looking for. A process of elimination eventually lead me to Gretsch semi-acoustics and the realisation that the sound I could hear in my head was chime, which a Country Gentleman or the like has in spades. (Maybe the Gibson 335 can do it too?)
But damn, that fireglo 330 sure looked good hanging on my wall.

Gretsch guitars rule on the whole

jut got an epiphone 335 after many years of only playing a tele. love the thicker sound and occasional feedback from the semi-hollow body but it feels heavier and more complicated for my simple mind

I want a hollow body because.

Can you get thicker sound from a Tele twiddling knobs on your amp or is the extra really from the hollow?

Humbucker pickups I would think the big difference.

I reckon a P90 or two would get a solidbody into semi-hollow territory - there's just something more vocal about them. Same with Jazzmaster pickups (which of course were intended to put a solidbody into semi-hollow territory).

"Thicker sound from a Tele" is a puzzling phrase to me, because for me the whole point of having a Tele is to be nonthick; when I want thickness I use a different guitar.

I would characterize my hollow Tele as airier, not really thicker.

But I think you could get thickness with chorus or reverb plus some tone-knob adjustment (like, treble on 3, mid 5, bass 7).

My first guitar is (was?) a black maple neck 1998 Mexican tele and I got a weird urge for a blonde one with a black pickguard a few years ago (too much Springsteen and Prince, even neither actually played an actual telecaster) while also getting obsessed with the Telecaster Deluxe.

I ended up getting an unfinished ash body from guitar fetish for like $70 and a batch of blonde wudtone finish and transplanting the rest of parts. Then I bought a tele deluxe neck, a hardtail strat bridge, matt pike humbuckers, and all the other knobs and pots and switches and routed the black telecaster body out and built it into a deluxe. Both turned out pretty well but the deluxe feels nothing like a regular tele due to a giant flat neck.

As a covid lockdown project I recently put a P90 in the tele neck with new pots and a five way superswitch for series/parallel/out-of-phase options and I can't think of anything I'd want to change about either of them now, other than the Deluxe weighing a ton despite routing a out a shitload of wood because the pickups are like bricks.

Prince played a Korean Tele, right? And Springsteen's was an Esquire body with a Strat neck, iirc. Which actually sounds kind of appealing, because I love my Strat's neck more than my Tele's, but like the bridge, knobs, etc. of the Tele.

Prince's was a Hohner Mad Cat

Interesting:

Hello I am a Moridaira collector. Moridaira is the original manufacturer of the Mad Cat Guitar. It was made with three different names.
1. H.S. Anderson 1974 to 1986 and in 2011 Reissue
2. Hohner 1978/ 1979 These are the rarest of the rare. I have searched for two years and so far NONE have been on the market. NONE. If it says Hohner then chances are you have a reproduction, or reissue, or just a fake. the real ones will have the Hohner logo in Rainbow writing, with block letters, it will also have the serial number stamped in the back of the peg head ending in 791. So far in my search the only owner of one of these is Prince. I do believe in 1985 Honer had a reissue made by moridaira, but only the one with the telecaster peg head, and a smooth plain chrome neck plate. If your neck plate is thick and says Hohner Professional it was made in Korea by the Samick factory. Almost all Prince, and Prinz guitars were made in Korea. The Six Killer Guitar is made in China. and sold by aliexpress.com The HS Benton is Chinese as well. If it has a 3/4″ mahogany strip it was made in China.
3. The Bill Lawrence 1980-1983 These are Made by Moridaira these are REAL Mad Cat Guitars. These are not Reissues, or copys. These were made from Mad Cat Bodys and necks. Using the original stock. These have the original celluloid. and are 100% The REAL THING. Using Bill Lawrence Pickups. In 1984 The Moridaira company Stopped using the “Bill Lawrence” Name and Changed it to Bill’s Brothers. These were made in Japan in 1984 and 1985. In 1986 Bill’s Brothers were made in Korea.

springstein's is a tele body with a squire neck

Actually, we need to split the difference. It's a Tele body and an Esquire neck:

On page 185 of his new memoir, Bruce Springsteen pays brief but heartfelt homage to his oldest musical collaborator: his old Fender electric guitar. “I strapped on my new guitar, a 1950s mutt with a Telecaster body and an Esquire neck, I’d purchased at Phil Petillo’s guitar shop for one hundred and eighty five dollars. With its wood body worn in like the piece of the cross that it was, it became the guitar that I’d play for the next 40 years. It was the best deal of my life.”

oh yeah I think I mean that although honestly I can't tell from necks on guitars if I'm honest

I really love that tele body on springsteen's guitar

Can you get thicker sound from a Tele twiddling knobs on your amp or is the extra really from the hollow?

― Ira Einhorn (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 7:19 PM (yesterday

Humbucker pickups I would think the big difference.

― earlnash, Wednesday, July 15, 2020 8:46 PM (yesterday)

Throughout the Spacemen 3 years, Jason Pierce was using an early-80s Telecaster w/standard single-coils and then a couple years into Spiritualized switched to '72-style Telecaster Thinlines with the WR humbuckers which he's been using ever since. Whether it's the solid-state H+H amp he had in SP3, an AC30, or a backline rental Marshall - to my ears, his guitar sound has mostly been the same for decades.

I guess my point is that so much of this comes down to the player. I understand Townshend's point about choosing the amps first and working backwards from there.

WRHBs were also deliberately voiced to sound like single coils - so the Tele Thinline WRHB sound is not at all the same as a 335 semi hollow with PAFs.

for Paul Weller in the Jam, and so on. And some of the best tones are all done in-amp anyway.

So he was Geddy Lee avant la lettre?

i've been playing my strat for the past couple days. stock "classic player" (american pickups, mexican assembly) from the mid-2000s. this is not news but strats are really beautifully designed guitars, like if the tele is the perfect utilitarian design the strat is the perfect elevated design. when i got it i was playing rhythm guitar in a cover band and needed something that would really cut and contrast with the other guitarist. i would always want to have a strat around.

my tele is one of those thinline reissues with the WRHBs. it's my first "good" electric from my teen years and i'd never get rid of it but it's also never exactly been what i wanted. sometimes i daydream about getting or making a very early-spec tele with a massive neck that's set up for insane twang.

There's a lot of arguing over whether the reissue WRHBs are "authentic" enough to the old sound but I suspect that it just needs the right amp to match up with.

My quarantine project is a parts-Jazzmaster - different thread, but I'm completely out of my mind in settling in on a spec.

https://www.tdpri.com/attachments/esquire3-wayarlo-jpg.430886/

This a neat trick on a Telecaster.

I got this option on a guitar with a push pull on the volume knob.

xposty Johnny Marr is another full-on guitar nerd who nonetheless used a solid state amp, for his formative Smiths stuff. I think the Roland Jazz Chorus-120? According to Wiki that was the guitar amp of choice for Metallica, too, for a while. Fwiw, ZZ Top is another band that famously used dummy amps while actually miking overdriven little vintage amps. I suspect a lot of bands did that, too.

I do love a JC-120. My college weird jazz band ran almost everything through a Jc-120 - bagpipes, harmonica, recorder, clarinet.

The guitar player in my current band has one he wants to sell. I would buy it except it is way too much amp for my needs. If it were a JC-90, I would be all over that shiznit.

Robert Smith in The Cure’s heyday, too. (Now some Line 6 bullshit to go with his Guitar Hero custom axe.)

oooh fuck me been on this thread a bunch then this has to pop up on Craigslist

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/msg/d/shakopee-zane-custom-build-usa-tele/7151108141.html

xposty Johnny Marr is another full-on guitar nerd who nonetheless used a solid state amp, for his formative Smiths stuff. I think the Roland Jazz Chorus-120? According to Wiki that was the guitar amp of choice for Metallica, too, for a while. Fwiw, ZZ Top is another band that famously used dummy amps while actually miking overdriven little vintage amps. I suspect a lot of bands did that, too.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, July 16, 2020 9:14 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think the empty cabs thing was very common in the 80s metal era

oooh fuck me been on this thread a bunch then this has to pop up on Craigslist

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/msg/d/shakopee-zane-custom-build-usa-tele/7151108141.html🕸

I know! I have no business buying it but....the question is...can I afford NOT to???

plus if you look at the body it's got Strat style contours on the back which is best of both worlds

nice-looking guitar. not that it matters much buying used, but sounds like this company went down in flames with a bunch of fraud accusations? https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?posts/26938777/

hmmm yeah that sounds shady, lots of that in the boutique guitar/pedal world unfortunately

i guess used i feel like this guy's be playing it on the regular and most of anything that could be wonky could be fixed by a good setup at a luthier

why am i talking myself into this???? i have three guitars i'm not doing anything with

lol same and i do this all the time

I mean even a real (non licensed) Bigsby like it's got is probably $300 installed

Saddles look like they are all pushed back to their limits as is the bridge, makes me wonder if the bridge is misulocated

it says right there it ‘plays like butter’ tho, you’re not allowed to say stuff like that on craigslist if it’s not true

the ja-90 tele is a sweet guitar imo:

https://shop.fender.com/en-US/electric-guitars/telecaster/jim-adkins-ja-90-telecaster-thinline/product-026235.html

ive got a prototype of the original translucent black one. mines got block inlays and the f-hole is in a different spot.

*mislocated, I'm very tired sorry

i get kind of bothered when like that one spottie posted or this one
https://shop.fender.com/en-US/electric-series/artist/guitars/jim-root-telecaster/0134444780.html

when they just put humbuckers in a telecaster. i don't get the point if it doesn't have the plate and bridge pickup

otherwise why not just get like a charvel super strat w/two humbuckers it's going to be more comfortable to play and a tele isn't a tele w/two hi gain humbuckers imo

never got the sense that the guys in slipknot were concerned with comfort while playing

When I saw Slint on their first reunion tour in 2005 iirc Pajo & whomever was playing Brian's parts (his brother I think?) both guitars had similar EMG pickups on their teles.

Dang, I forgot they had ebay'd them after the tour:

doodz, yoo know yoo want da slintguitar

m@tt how do you feel about a tele deluxe?

also a lot of the new teles have the belly cut, like that jim root one. super comfortable to play, actually. i think some people just love the tele look but want to play heavy stuff on it, and they want the fender logo vs the charvel logo.

purists agree with you tho.

love the joe duplantier san dimas (tele) in natural with the block inlays
https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s---U2qFlMZ--/f_auto,t_supersize/v1604947855/ywhljrjfn8ovycydjffl.jpg

I personally do not dig a Tele OR Strat with humbuckers. I have an inner purist that is like, hey these are for single-coil aficionados. If you want a humbucker, you have the option of like, ALMOST ALL THE OTHER GUITARS IN THE UNIVERSE.

Further, I know there are some Teles out there with more comfy body carves and a bit of bevel here or chamfer there. That's OK.

Personally I like my Strat as it is, and have a (Squier!) Thinline Tele that is fine as well.

https://i.imgur.com/xe6q2Oa.jpg
this sounds great and it's all Tele

m@tt how do you feel about a tele deluxe?

also a lot of the new teles have the belly cut, like that jim root one. super comfortable to play, actually. i think some people just love the tele look but want to play heavy stuff on it, and they want the fender logo vs the charvel logo.

purists agree with you tho.

― Spottie, Thursday, December 3, 2020 3:24 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like the one with the regular bridge and the humbucker in the neck, never rated the neck pickup that highly

i mean...i'm kinda trolling, i just think that the bridge sound is the core of the tele sound, you're basically just saying hey i want a different guitar but teles look cool, which honestly there's nothing wrong with that at the end of the day

I personally do not dig a Tele OR Strat with humbuckers. I have an inner purist that is like, hey these are for single-coil aficionados. If you want a humbucker, you have the option of like, ALMOST ALL THE OTHER GUITARS IN THE UNIVERSE.

i kinda feel that way, i have an HSS strat i got for super cheap which i have some internal shame about

i might replace the dimarzio humbucker that is in it with a TV Smith Filter'tron humbucker mount, which is basically a Gretsch pickup that fits in a conventional humbucker slot, at least something different

https://tvjones.com/tv-classic-bridge-humbucker-mount/#product-tab-addition-326

that Charvel is a nice looking guitar actually

i like it as well. very classy. even the massive block inlays work.

my first guitar is one of those HH '72 thinline reissues. i bought it when i was 16 and had pretty simplistic ideas about what guitar to buy, and it's not what i would purchase today, but i do think there's a case for humbuckers on a guitar with a fender scale length and fender's choice of body woods.